Are the sliders in Adobe Camera Raw input color space independent?

Question

Are the sliders (shadows/highlights) in Adobe Camera Raw affecting the device-dependent data before transformation to device-independent color space, or does this transformation happen after the input data was already converted to a device-independent working space?

If the latter, does the TRC of the input->independent conversion matter for the correct functionality of the sliders? In other words, do they expect a delinearized camera input profile?

I would be interested in creating a flat input profile for my camera, for example using DCamProf, but before going through all that effort I'd like to know if Adobe Camera Raw would be confused by a flat TRC.

Answer 1

To answer my own question, no, you can't work in ACR/Lightroom with a linear input profile.

From the developer of DCamProf on a Luminous Landscape thread.

All Adobe's profiles apply a curve, and afaik all have subjective tunings too to provide a pleasing color appearance with that curve applied. You can't really work in Lightroom with a linear colorimetric profile and get good color appearance for general purpose photography, as all the tools to apply contrast will distort color in one way or another.